se does not understand scholar

[Hawklaser]

Replying to Connor.
I love what you said. It’s exactly how I feel. I think SE mistake was taking so long to remove sch dps kit so of course the player base got use to it. Sch was never intended to be a hybrid healer. People keep saying that and I never heard Yoshi P or anyone from square say that it was. I’ve always been a healer in every mmo I play. I love healing. All people talk about is damage damage damage. Now I’m not against healers dps let’s get that straight first. It’s fun and exciting. I love helping my team get the job done faster. I would not call sch boring. It’s actually very good now. My issue with sch back in the day is it didn’t have enough healing attached to it. Finally now it does. Solo healing is less of a headache and it’s shields are top notch along with seraph. I love it. In dungeons it’s very fun. Art of war is fun to use. I love being in tank and melee range helping out while still throwing out lustrates on my tank to build my fey gauge. No idea why people are saying it’s boring. Whm’s weren’t all over the forums crying for 4 years about dps. They just wanted a little party support. Now with misery they are a damage machine and that’s ok. It’s their reward for using lilies. Let them have that. I’m very happy in the direction they are taking sch. Let us be more healing with crazy op shields and a healing pet. The aetherflow dump is ok I guess for people that want it but I’m not sure why. In a dungeon run I recitation and excog and shield the tank at the start. Pull wall to wall then I throw down a SS and lustrate the tank as he’s probably half health then. I use aetherflow again. Dps while lustrating the tank. Not sure how people have 2-3 aetherflows left to dump. I mean sometimes I do if the tank is really good at utilizing their defensive cds and our dps doesn’t get hit by aoes. Usually I run out of aetherflows just from excog, SS alone. Sch has been very fun so far and I’m hoping they stick to their guns and not give us back allot of dps abilities. An aetherflow dump will be fine as it’s what most sch are asking for so give them that but keep our dps.

Sorry, but if SE keeps going down this path with Sch, I'll probably shelf it for good. Its thematic feel of a Military Tactician has shifted a bit in Shadowbringers, and if it keeps shifting in this direction its not going to really feel right anymore and therefor disjointed and unfun to me, which is totally different from if it is an effective healer or not.

Keep in mind the only healing class initially available until level 30 was Conjuror. At which point you could unlock the the Whm job, and later after a few patches Sch. Arcanist was designed as a DPS class, DoT/Pet Based. I am pretty sure the dps was DoT based to help free up player attention for pet management.

With Sch building upon the Arcanist foundation, and being shield based it had a very strategic and tactical feel to it, befitting of the Tactician thematic. With the weaker heals, you had to plan ahead and shield before the aoe's hit. You had to plan ahead to have aetherflow charges on hand to help cover spike damage and player screw ups. You had to plan ahead to know when you could Miasma+Bio+Bane to help clear things quickly. There were also some synergies between Sch's toolkit and Warriors, as Lustrate was originally a %max HP based heal.

Sacred Soil manipulated the battlefield in a defensive manor, while Shadow Flare was an offensive manor. Manipulating the battlefield is something that very much fits with the tactician thematic of the Scholar job. We lost Shadow Flare, an AoE DoT+slow, yet Whm can have Holy with its stun to help on big pulls.

Art of War just clashes with the whole tactician thematic to me, as it places you in the one spot a tactician would try and avoid if at all possible, the middle of a melee. Shadow Flare, Miasma, Bio, and Bane could have done with reskins/renames for a better overall fit, but their actual usage already fit the thematic.

The whole reason I went with Sch over Whm way back in ARR was due to thematics, and its more proactive playstyle which necessitated planning ahead.

Cycling between a handful of limited oGCDs most of the important ones with a 1m gated resource, only a handful of GCD heal options. Dps rotations of Art of War for AoE, and Bio -> Broil/Ruin til need to reapply bio for when there is not much healing need do not make a very engaging class. The fact that the Fairy can handle most incidental healing as well. Plus thanks to the current damage spacing in battles, and people getting better overtime, there is becoming less and less need to plan ahead. As in most encounters the big group wide blasts are often spaced farther apart than Indom's Cooldown for example, so very few things actually need pre-hit succor shields.

Its this thematic shift that is hurting Sch Players the most I would say.